Consultant's View, 2009

Jan 2009

What went wrong on Wall Street?

The "risk managers" at the financial firms were supposed to keep us safe on Wall Street. These are very smart, technically astute people who had fancy computer models that were supposed to keep us from taking too much risk. What went wrong?

Systemic Problems

Any business person has had people make them an offer to cheat their company or to invest their time, effort, and resources into "something that might sell if you have it".

It's Official! It's a Recession. Now what?

There are a couple of broad lessons we can learn from prior recessions and economic hard times.

Spiritual Results

What happens at work affects our integrity, morals, our bonds with other people, as well as our hopes and dreams.

Is your business being affected by fears?

Not only do people freeze up with fear, they take wrong actions and misread instruments.

What can we do about fears?

The counter point to fear is not to deny the fear, but to have the courage to move forward in the middle of fear.

The Paradox of Economic Recovery

It is one of the paradoxes of the human condition that when we have such a bad economic downturn, we won't have recovery as long as a lot of people are searching for that recovery. Why is that?

Do You Want to Make Changes?

Expect opposition

If you have come to the conviction that you have to make some changes, get ready. Nobody is going to like what you do.

Extinction or Mammalian Thriving?

When we look at the differences between the animals that survived and those that didn't, there are a few characteristics that could be valuable in today's business climate. When the huge companies are dying right and left, almost all the major banks are gasping for air, and large automobile companies are being buried under the fallout, what would help other companies survive this changed climate?

Ramen Profitability

Today, the new trend is to look for companies that are "Ramen Profitable". That means that the company is generating enough money to support the founders in the "least cost survival mode". The founders are eating Ramen Noodles but not much more.

Too many connections, not enough value

Is your networking actually helping you? Between MySpace, FaceBook, and LinkedIn and many more, electronic social networking has taken off and many people claim that you need to have as many "friends" and "connections" as possible.

Security One More Time!

There was another major hack recently. Network Solutions was hosting a number of web sites and their servers got hacked with the result of a half a million credit card numbers got exposed.

The Economics of Trade

Over the last decade, there have been a couple of best selling books purporting to show that trade has significantly changed. Both of these books, the "Long Tail" and the "World is Flat", mistake changes in the costs of trade for a fundamental change in trade practices.

New Technology Cusp?

Every time a new computer technology comes into being, it starts by being used by specialists, then by people playing games, and only later do general purpose applications show up. Each time, the new technology was derided as a "toy" by those who were working with the previous technology. Over time, each new technology reaches a "cusp" where it changes from being a fun technology into something that most people will use. We are approaching that point with smart cell phone technology.

How to Kill a Great Company

Attitude is the key to a company's future. We are told to hire for attitude. We do well to fire for attitude. But the key attitude that we would do well to fire for is one that very few companies actually check for.

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